Hours after an individual killed two children and injured 18 others in a school shooting in Minneapolis on Aug. 27, that city’s mayor warned the public against fixating on the shooter’s gender identity.
“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” Mayor Jacob Frey said at a press conference on the afternoon of Aug. 27, the day of the fatal shooting at Annunciation Church by Robin Westman, who died by suicide in the incident. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. Kids died. This needs to be about them.”
Still, many anti-trans commentators, and even the White House, seized on the moment to falsely draw connections between identifying as transgender and being violent. Some have also sought to highlight the fact that the killer in a Nashville school shooting from 2023 identified as transgender.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked during a press briefing about what kind of “consequences” gender-affirming care providers could face since the shootings in Nashville and Minneapolis involved trans individuals, said the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “is investigating perhaps links between some of these prescription drugs some of these minors may be taking and an increase in violence, and obviously we have mental health problems in this country.”
Leavitt was referring to comments earlier in the day by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was interviewed on Fox & Friends and was asked about the possibility that medication that may have been taken by Westman while transitioning could have played “a role” in deciding to carry out the mass shooting.
“We are launching studies into their potential contribution,” he said, adding that “we are doing those kind of studies now.” Westman’s medical history is not clear. Kennedy also raised concerns about whether Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors “and some other psychiatric drugs might be contributing to violence.”
Other in the administration also made it a point to highlight the shooter’s gender identity, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, for no relevant reason.
“We have confirmation that the shooter at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, MN was a 23 year-old man, claiming to be transgender,” Noem wrote on X. “This deranged monster targeted our most vulnerable: young children praying in their first morning Mass of the school year. This deeply sick murderer scrawled the words ‘For the Children’ and ‘Where is your God?’ and ‘Kill Donald Trump’ on a rifle magazine.”
